Son of Privilege
by Listening to trees
Summary: He wasn't always the demon of sloth.


**TRIGGER WARNINGS:**

**Rape/Non-Con,** **Underage,** Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Implied animal abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pseudo-Incest, Sadism, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Gore, Questionable depictions of psychopathy

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Contrary to his own claims, Ariel zu Windisch-Graetz was not in fact, of royal blood. What he had neglected to educate his colleagues upon was the difference between a Fürst and a Prinz. While both meant 'prince' in English, for want of a better word, the distinction between an actual heir to the monarchy and the head of a _princely_ house was obviously considerable. It was even more so when one realised that Austrian nobility had been abolished since 1919, which left Ariel quite bereft of the privileges of his title.

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However, it could never be said that he was not born into the trappings of luxury. His forefathers had, through a lucrative business and politics, managed to retain the old castle and its surrounding plots. His biggest source of discontent was thus the identical fiend who had emerged mere seconds earlier than him.

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Never, said Stefan zu Windisch-Graetz, had his lineage borne witness to such intense rivalry. While competition was generally encouraged, surely it did not involve juvenile attempts to cause serious bodily harm to each other. Why, even his least favourite uncle had drawn the line at hinting an abrupt end to his nephew's career, and he had been the black sheep of the family. His wife had snorted into her tea, then sighed. Well. At least that headache was the nannies'. Her darlings might be the pride of the family, but there was only so much fighting and preschool insult matches a sane adult could stand.

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Ariel would say that it wasn't his fault. No, he _knows_ it wasn't his fault. He could've been perfectly happy; happy forever with his parents in their shining castle, a little prince destined to inherit a kingdom. And he would. He had always been special. Nobody else among his classmates, however rich they were, could claim direct relation to the heroes of yore. Nobody else could speed through the books and soak up symbols, equations and words like he did. At night, beneath his silken duvet, he would shine his little torchlight onto his hand and examine the carmine of his ichor. Then he would go to sleep, satisfied with the superiority of his genes, and his dreams would glow.

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(Imagine how amused his father was when the young prodigy took to parading around in a silver crown he'd demanded on his seventh birthday. Which, when explained to be actually 50% copper, the star-struck school was only too happy to accommodate.)

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But like all princes, his fairy tale had a dragon. A changeling. The books said they were left behind to replace kidnapped children; his demon-spawn had crawled up to nestle beside him in his mother's womb instead. If Ariel brought home a note of recommendation for his French essay, you could be sure Rasiel would do the same for a different subject. God forbid that he should stoop to such unoriginality as to imitate.

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No, Siel would garner raving texts of praise from _three _other professors.

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Even some of their subjects (classmates) liked him better, whenever he sneaked in bigger toys or better chocolate. No matter, all it taught Ariel was the fickleness in human nature and the tides of power. Just as Rasiel had stolen their favour from him, he could–and would–one day take them away from Rasiel.

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However, try as he might, he couldn't win the same loyalty from Siel's damn dog. The beautiful Samoyed's polite affection towards him, although proper for his master status, paled in the sun of the pup's eagerness for Rasiel. No matter how clever Ariel was or how many canine treats he wasted his pocket money on, it was as if the stupid, lumpish brute couldn't appreciate it.

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_Fine._ Now he knew better than to expect taste or intelligence from an animal.

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He sucked in a deep breath and put down the gore-spattered rock.

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It was only three weeks later, after Ariel's blue-ribbon colt went missing, that the war became official.

…..

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First there were knives. Small-toothed ones, butter knives that trailed delicate beads of blood over wrists, like ladies' bracelets. Serrated knives for fillets poking at legs under the tables and kissing necks tucked in beds, imaginary chop chops sounding loudly over soft, squishy reality as the byproduct of too many cartoons. This, of course, meant rope burns and bandages, but 'boys will be boys', because they've not left anything visible or deep enough that they couldn't treat it themselves. Yet.

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Sometimes there were words, but mostly there was poison. Laxatives when one of them was feeling playful, sublimed acid if one managed to lock the other in a bathroom. Soft toys and unguarded clothes sprinkled with glass dust or shredded needles; no incendiaries because fire was too messy and unsatisfactorily final. They both grew to avoid fruit for a reason (and that heaven-forged soulmate of arsenic, chocolate).

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Their subjects too. A race to collect the best-looking, richest and the smartest, to be paraded in each other's face every other week. It soon became the unspoken rule among these tradeables to never, _ever_ cross a Windisch-Graetz, as they told each other ghost stories about what had really happened to the missing children, who had naughtily wandered into nearby caves even though they were both really, _really_ afraid of the dark.

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(If Ariel had been privy to their thoughts, he would've laughed: why do something as boring as pushing their dead maimed bodies into the water when you could persuade their living maimed ones to jump?)

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In the end, Ariel still came back to knives. Fish knives, pocketknives, boning knives and letter openers. Silent, grave and pure in their accompanying ecstasy and threat of razing this creature that masqueraded him, _was_ him, bewitching face and soul.

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It could've gone on like that. They could have continued dancing perfectly, on and on 'til the sun died or Ariel truly won. Except stupid, incompetent Rasiel had to hide his bottle of hallucinogens in the liquor cabinet and fail to retrieve it fast enough, even though it looked exactly like one of mother's miniatures.

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Needless to say, when you were arrogant enough to leave off cleaning your fingerprints and your mother had explicitly demonstrated the effects of a full dose–by yammering feverishly for ten hours straight–you couldn't very well peg it as a harmless joke.

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You could, however, decide to bring your intended victim down with you.

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So in came the doctors and tests; out went Ariel and Rasiel, sent to pack. It was only for a little while, they were assured. They were only going away until they got better.

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Who did the adults think they were tricking?

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Certainly not Ariel, but he knew a lack of choice when he saw one. It was alright. He would rise again. Hadn't Alfred the Great been forced to hide in a peasant's hovel before his final triumph too?

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While his was growing further and further out of reach.

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Bastard. _Bastard.__**Bastard**__BASTARD__**BASTARD–**_

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He cursed incessantly under his breath in eight different languages, but failed to fit his rage into any single word. Cursed, because when he'd finally snapped and attacked they had chemically waterboarded his consciousness. And nothing, not the curses or screams or rake of screaming fingernails over his blazing body, could express the profanity his life had become.

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Except maybe Ariel taking Him apart.

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Still, that wasn't quite as satisfying as it should be. The demon didn't even struggle that much as Ariel tried to fuse his spinal column and larynx, after he'd properly purified the face and body that dared bear his likeness. In fact, Rasiel's (ruined) eyes didn't even acknowledge him at all, as he went limp without a whimper.

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Always trying to spoil his fun. Typical.

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Clean, drug-free rage began to anoint him. It boiled, from his throat and core–ripping, eating, setting his mind alight like the sun–and just when he thought he would rupture, it cracked his face with the first flowerbud of a giggle.

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And _oh_, how he laughed and laughed and _laughed_! No theatre nor tragedy could be so saintly or delicious; no scream or god could so liberate him. On and on truth flowed, spreading his body with warmth; crawling up into the eaves in whoops!-mischievous peals as he stood, like _justice_, over his doppelganger's form. So loud was he that the nurses outside would've come in–if they weren't busy nursing bawling, hungry maggots.

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Was this it? (SNORT) This sad, fleshy, faceless puppet that smelled faintly of cold raw chicken? How had he, how did he even _allow_ something so–HAHEEHAHA**HAHA**–so _limp_ become his fear? Something so utterly _filthy_ and destructible?

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The mirth stopped. A withered smile cracked tear-stained lips.

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Pathetic. _Pathetic_.

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But at the very least, there will never be another in the world like him. He was quite unique and safely alone.

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Bending down, he gave his past self one last kiss. The slip of his tongue tip past eyelids was an accident. But the intense curiosity flaring in his gut after was no mistake, as was the ensued making of obscene love with the empty eye-sockets. Bone-rough, fluid-slick, bone-rough, fluid-slick …the alternating rasps on his tongue and soft, lovingly wet noises was fit to make this prince sway his hips and moan. Whimpers, blood searing cheeks and rabbit-timid small hands fumbling at trousers, and there!–_oh_–the shyly peeking half-removed femur to nudge at his virgin body's first attempt at an erection. He thrust and thrust (tongue hip tongue hip tonguehiptonguehiptonguehip), not knowing himself as he rushed into frighteningly happy completion.

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Then came a one-two in the darkness. The heartbeats of stars. He was Ariel again, free and separate, lying next to a nothing-corpse (once his magnificent, his only). Arising and stepping over it, reborn, he became diffused, for the first but not last time in his life, with a sense of infinite peace.

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(Later, when he was old enough, he would learn to savour this every year. The unfortunate call-girls–blond pageboy wig and boyishly thin, always–never anticipated the flash of his knives and laugh.)

…..

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They would never take his title from him, Ariel vowed. Not his foolish, undeserving parents, nor those foolish commoners who'd underestimated him. Even if they stripped him of his birthright, robbed him of his estates and struck his name forever and ever from the family list.

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_Yes_, he thought, nails digging into his palm as he ran into the night. The Italian newspaper clip in his fist bloodied as it crumpled.

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As long as he was part of a family, a better, _worthier_ family led by a queen, he would _always _be a prince.

…..

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The man, they said, had already lived here for three years. No one knew where he came from, just that he was comfortable pitching hay and nursing lager despite the oddly refined bearing. He also had this tendency to scold people about polishing chandeliers and setting the right napkins if you got him drunk. One could almost believe that he used to serve as some elite's manservant. A butler.

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Far outside the circle of hysteria, a wind rose. It sifted past dewy grasses riddled with baby's breath and monkshood. It wandered through the village square, stealing enticing food smells before passing beyond the police-taped door.

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Inside, it probed a little, nudging at the suitcase before ruffling the travel documents and newspapers on the table. Then it died in the blood-soaked air where the unrecognisable slab of naked meat hung.

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FORMER NOBLE FAMILY SUFFERS MYSTERIOUS GRISLY DEATHS IN THEIR HOMES

Correspondents predict a final collapse of the Windisch-Graetz dynasty

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A/N:

-The **Windisch-Graetz** family exists, but all persons and events depicted above are **fictional**.

**-Miniature **–a very small bottle of alcoholic drink

-In floriography, baby's breath symbolises innocence. Monkshood, however, is poisonous.

-Headcanon: Every time Belphegor eats chocolate or anything chocolate-flavoured, he still feels the thrill of having cheated death.


End file.
